If there was any doubt that liberals are ruthless, this should dispel it.

John Schnatter, the founder of the Papa John’s pizza chain, has been a target for the American left since the Obama years, but particularly since last fall, when he publicly blamed poor leadership in the NFL for allowing players to stage protests during the national anthem.

This week, leftists got their chance to strike back.

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Schnatter resigned as Papa John’s chairman Wednesday night after a media-generated “controversy” over his use of the n-word during a conference call in May, according to the New York Post.

The context of the call makes it crystal clear that Schnatter wasn’t using the word to directly disparage blacks — he was referring to the founder of Kentucky Fried Chicken when he said, “Colonel Sanders called blacks n******.”

But liberals sensed their chance and the news media struck hard. An article about the call originally published in Forbes led to a flurry of follow up stories that eventually forced Schnatter to issue a statement Wednesday declaring:

“News reports attributing the use of inappropriate and hurtful language to me during a media training session regarding race are true. Regardless of the context, I apologize. Simply stated, racism has no place in our society.”

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That wasn’t enough to appease the mob, though. And on Wednesday night, Schnatter stepped down from the chairmanship of the company.

And leftists on social media raced to dance on his corporate grave.

It’s interesting how the folks that take issue with black athletes kneeling usually have racist tendencies. As soon as he made his kneeling stance public my Papa John’s account went… pic.twitter.com/eHOywB825W

And that last one, showing anthem protest instigator Colin Kaepernick winking at the news, makes the real motivation behind the “controversy” clear.

No fair reading of that Forbes article beyond an inflammatory, context-free headline (“Papa John’s Founder Used N-Word During Conference Call”) could lead to the conclusion that Schnatter himself was using the word to describe blacks.

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The article even acknowledged that when Schnatter brought up memories of racist incidents that took place during his childhood in Indiana he “apparently intended for the remarks to convey his antipathy to racism.”

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But the conference call wasn’t really the issue. Liberal anger at Schattner was.

Could he have found another way to express what he was saying that would not have offended whoever it was who was on the conference call who was so thin-skinned? Probably.

But the reality is, Schnatter has had a liberal target on his back for some time now, but especially since his national anthem remarks in November. What we’re seeing now is a frame-up.

Any thinking person knows what happened here. Probably even some of those Twitter commenters know that the real drive to push Schnatter out of his career had nothing to do with what was said on that conference call in May, and everything to do with his public politics.

Largely a product of Catholic schools, who discovered Ayn Rand in college, Joe is a lifelong newspaperman who learned enough about the trade over 30 years to be skeptical of every word ever written. He was also lucky enough to have a job that didn't need a printing press to do it.